I think you should persist in asking for 25,000 miles or the $400 voucher or whatever YOU think the defficiency was worth to YOU. When you buy a seat you should have reasonable expectation that you will have a fully working setup. If something doesn't work, then the airline should acknowledge the problem, compensate you for selling you something they didn't deliver, and FIX THE PROBLEMS. I suspect that many of the seats have defficiencies such as burnt out lights, bad sound or no sound, no video, etc. and that nothing gets done for weeks at a time.

The "value" of each piece of the flight "experience" is valued differently depending on the individual passenger. For some passengers the wider seat may be most important, for others it may be the food, and others may value the music and movies more than the side seat or the food. The point is that people are individuals and what one person values is often different from what another values.

So if you sleep the entire flight and have a very large butt and are over 6'6", then the seat is obviously of more value to you than if you aren't tired, want something to break up the boredom, and have a skinny butt and are 5'5" and want to watch a movie.

The airline should inspect these seats often, have a way for the passenger to report problems, get the problems fixed right away (even if they are going to rip out the seats in a few months and replace them), and focus on delivery of the entire flying experience - not just safety and transportion.

Corrected a typo


[This message has been edited by pderby (edited 07-11-2002).]